STORIES

Sitting on train in 1943, Barbara was faced with an old familiar boredom. She was traveling with her mom and older sister to meet her father, an ROTC officer, at an army base down south. Sitting in one of the stuffy sleeper cars, Barbara couldn’t take the waiting any longer. The terrible boredom drove her to leave her mother and sister sitting in the sleeper car while she set out to explore the rest of the train.

Half an hour later, her panic-stricken mother found her performing a one-girl variety show for a carriage of rapt soldiers. Like a little Shirley Temple, Barbara tap danced and did ballet pirouettes in the aisle and sang songs, much to the delight of all the men onboard.

My first experience with the Stillwater High School Nordic Ski team was in eighth grade. I was awkward and uncoordinated and, honestly, grumpy about being forced by my mother to try this crazy sport of cross-country skiing. Then, as now, there were dozens and dozens of kids on the team … girls, boys, young kids, older kids, fast and fit, well- honed athletes focused on national-level goals and some of the softer variety that moved a bit more slowly and thought about racing in more abstract terms. It was a broad spectrum and yet every single person there was powerful, confident, and cool. Except me. I kept my head down and worked to disappear within the throng. I didn’t belong and was confident my mom would agree that skiers were a suspect crowd and I’d be better off coming directly home every day after school. On the third day of skiing, I skipped practice – I got home early and told my mom that practice had been cancelled. When I returned on the fourth day, Coach Bill zeroed in on me immediately. “Where were you yesterday, Kris?”  I was stunned that he knew my name and even more so that he noticed my absence. I couldn’t come up with a lie fast enough and just gaped. In my hesitation, he saw the truth and continued encouragingly but firmly, “You’re part of this team. We need you here.”

At the time, I wondered if Coach Bill saw some unique athletic or leadership-potential in me and that’s why he singled me out from the masses to insist on my value to the team. His comment made me feel special: stronger, more confident, more welcome. It gave me the courage to raise my head and look into the eyes of my teammates instead of away. It took me years to realize Bill didn’t single me out at all.  He was treating me exactly the same way he treated everyone. No, he didn’t see any special potential in me or any exceptional value – nothing beyond what he recognized in any of the 135 teenagers standing there in sneakers and sweatpants: I was a kid who could learn to love skiing and in so doing, contribute to his team.

It’s probably a good thing I didn’t realize that making everyone feel valued and welcome is Bill’s modus operandi. I believed him when he told me I mattered and assumed he saw something within me that I couldn’t yet see. His words changed my experience. I never missed another practice and, over time, I found my place, and my friends, growing as an athlete, as an individual, and as part of the team, fulfilling a potential Bill created by telling me I was a necessary part of the team.

Eleanor is simply “Grams” to her loving granddaughter Jess. The two share a special bond. A horse-lover all her life, Grams shared in her granddaughter’s passion. Grams took Jess and her little cousin Carrie to Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky. For a couple horse-crazy teens, seeing the world-renowned equestrian facility was a dream come true.

On warm summer days, Jess and Grams would ride their horses down weathered country roads. Grandma rode Kit. Jess rode Tess. They’d throw reality to the wind in these horseback moments, their small Wisconsin farm town would be the English countryside of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice – a book and film all three generations of Severson women adore.

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.” ― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Bucky and Barbara spent two nights in a cabin on Lake Mille Lacs, which served as their honeymoon. Then, just like that, he packed his bags and away he went to attend basic training in Fort Leonard Wood in the Missouri Ozarks for three months.

The young bride was beside herself with grief to be separated so soon from her husband. Still living at home with her parents, she shut herself in her bedroom, crying and listening to her Ames Brothers record. Her and Bucky’s song was “You, You, You,” and she played it over and over and over, waiting for him to come home.

“I was so lonesome," Barbara says. "I knew how long he’d be away, and so I took paperclips, connected them into long strings, and hung them all over my room. There was one paperclip for every day he’d be gone. And each day that went by, I removed one paperclip.”

He was funny.

“Yeah, you could say that,” Eleanor dabbed her eyes. “He made me laugh, and cry.”

The love of her life, husband of 47 years and father to her three children, Don Severson would show Eleanor the world. Serving in the United States Air Force, Don and the family lived everywhere from Maine to Louisiana, and as far as Tokyo, Japan.

They had it made in Japan. They lived in a two-bedroom bungalow. Their three small children, all two years apart, shared a bedroom and there was a maid on-site to keep their busy lives in order. Following their return to the States, their eldest daughter Kathy secured first place in the Broiler Fest parade – an annual event attended by 20,000 plus people in their small hometown of Eleva, Wisconsin. Her colorful kimono was the wildest thing the tiny Nordic village had ever seen.

In the early 1900s, the O'Sullivan brothers left their hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, and headed west. Their dream: to establish a family farming operation in Montana near the Yellowstone River Valley. With 3,000 untouched acres in front of them, they built three homesteads – one where Meg O'Sullivan would reside with five older siblings. There, on this 20-person family ranch, Meg cultivated a loyalty to family, strong work ethic and passion for the Catholic faith. 

“This was the ranch. Here is the road coming in. My attempt at a cattle gate as it came in and there were three houses. Our house was here. We had our own country school where we went to grade school because we had enough kids to qualify. My dad was the clerk of record for the school district.”
 

Barbara was only five years old, but she was aware of the war. There was a bigness to it, a mass, looming like a storm and about to break. In the evenings, she remembered, her parents would shoo her and her older sister Alice up to their bedroom as company filtered in downstairs. Pretty women in printed A-line skirts and tall men in high-waisted trousers would stand in the living room, drinking Manhattans and smoking cigarettes. All of the men downstairs were in the service. Snippets of the conversation would float up the stairs. There was always the talk of war.  

“Any team can have a training plan and that’s cool, but that’s also a given. But our Stillwater team, we really genuinely loved one another and took care of one another,” says Jessie. “For me, the Stillwater ski team really instilled this idea of, ‘You work with the team and for the team and because of the team you get so much happiness and satisfaction out of working hard every single day.’ I feel really lucky to have grown up in that area.”

Jessie embodies everything the Stillwater High School Nordic Ski team stands for. After all, she’s bred out of a village of people whose experience, passion, and genuine care for others has proven wildly successful.

From Bill Simpson, Jessie learned the value of inclusion. “We’d get exchange students from Germany or Finland for a year and Bill would scrounge up boots and poles and skis so they didn’t have to go out and buy things. It’s those little things, those little extra steps that just make everyone feel so valued,” she says.

Kris Hansen instilled in Jessie the passion to train to be the best skier, but to remain who you are. Kris was never pushy with Jessie, she would always say, “You have to decide if you want to go and train to do this, and if you do, I’ll give you advice on how to do it ,” says Jessie. The beauty of Kris is her ability to see each athlete as a whole person. “It was never ski, ski, ski!,” she adds. “It was like, ‘Okay, you’ve got a big test coming up, how are you going to be happy and healthy and enjoy skiing and working for the team?’ She always helped me find balance.”

Bob Hagstrom and countless others were the “warm blanket” that catapulted Jessie to the professional level. Generous fundraisers held by Chilkoot Cafe allowed her to travel the globe with the U.S. Ski Team. That belief in the young, strong-willed athlete is something Jessie now brings to U.S. Nordic skiing. “The Stillwater team really functions as a team, they really care about each other,” says Jessie’s mom Deb. “When Jessie joined the U.S. Team they weren’t fully a team, but they were working on it. But Jessie knew it. She had lived it. It was in her bones from Stillwater and I think she really is the one who brought that.”

The Seversons were not keen on sleeping in on the weekends. Their blue jumpsuits resting on hangers in the hallway signaled an early rise. Every Saturday, the couple would be greet the morning sun aboard a small, piston-powered plane.  To prepare, Don was fastidious about watching the 10 o’clock news – jotting down every angle of the next day’s weather. Wind speed. Barometric pressure. Visibility.

Together, Eleanor and Don were Civil Air Patrols. The federally-supported, volunteer position involved three key missions: emergency services, aerospace education and cadet programs for teenage youth.

At night, my sister Kaye did her homework, and I tried to get it done in study periods, so that after 6:00 dinner, and by the time that Kaye and I got dishes done, I wanted to read. Any time I had free time, honey, I was reading. My sister said I always had my nose in a book. I devoured "The Bobbsey Twins" when I was five years old, and "Nancy Drew" of course, the girl detective, of which my aunt Marie always kept me supplied. I had a library card when I was in first grade on.  And before that, my dad would use his library card to get me books. If I wanted James Fenimore Cooper, that whole series, or the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, my aunt got all of those for me and I just went from one series to the next. My sister and I had the big front room on the second floor of our house, and we had an alcove where my bed was and I always had a flashlight so I could finish some book. Oh, I just loved those days, I loved those books. 

Barbara’s father was in the Reserve Officers Training Corps, the ROTC, which meant that he had to leave his position as a chemistry instructor at the University of Minnesota and travel to his appointed army base to begin work training the men.

The move took Barbara to Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. She saw towering live oaks and flowering dogwoods. She witnessed the reality of the segregated south. She learned to say “Yes, sir” or “Yes, ma’am” when speaking to adults. When she was on the army base, she swung on the swing sets while in the distance men ran drills. She never failed to stop swinging the instant she heard the tart blow of a trumpet sounding taps. Barbara would locate the flag and salute it.

“When I think of what makes me proud of the Nordic Ski team, I wouldn’t point to championships or anything like that,” Bill says. “Instead I would say that I’m proud cross-country skiing has become a major activity in Stillwater. The way our ski team has changed in Stillwater is really gratifying. It’s special, and it’s more than a sport. It’s a lifelong activity.”

Bill continues to coach the ski team, and he skis as often as he can. When he’s finished teaching for the day, he commonly gets to ski practice before the students to ski for an hour or two. His love of the sport also takes him to the Boundary Waters and around the world to enjoy the outdoor trails with a pair of skis underfoot.

“Thinking back on the years of coaching this team, it’s really incredible because the team has gotten so big. I think it’s the largest in the state and probably in the United States,” Bill says. “I wouldn’t say my expertise is in skiing,” Bill adds with a laugh. “I think being able to involve other people and to attract kids to join the team is a strength of mine. I’m also a pretty positive person, and that’s a big thing. I would never say a negative thing to any skier.”

One thing’s for sure: Bill looms large for any skier that has experienced the Stillwater Ski program. He’s a legend as a coach and a champion for anyone who expresses the smallest shred of interest in the sport. Of course for Bill, this is about so much more than a sport—it’s about the people, the values, and the tradition.

There’s a lot about Ralph’s story that’s delightfully old-fashioned. He first came to Marine on the St. Croix as an S&H Green Stamps salesman, peddling the stamps that served as a loyalty program for customers conscientious enough to collect them. Customers could redeem a certain amount of stamps for a pound of sugar or a couple loaves of bread.

Through his many visits to grocery stores across the Midwest, Ralph realized he wanted to run his own grocery store. He liked being around people and connecting with them through everyday conversation. It seemed like a good move to own a store. Right around the time that this idea came to him, he dropped by Marine’s General Store with his S&H stamps only to discover that the owner was about to retire and was looking for a buyer. Ralph didn’t hesitate.

“I was 25 years old when my wife and I bought the general store,” Ralph says. “It was a typical general store; there were quite a few around then. The fellow that I bought it from, his family had had it since the early 1900s. It was a good-sized store, very old. And the area was still quite a farm community, so there were a lot of hardware items for sale. We also had plumbing supplies, tools, and groceries. We had thread and needles for the ladies that sewed. It was a real general store.”

Ralph even recalls a certain recognizable Minnesotan celebrity who spent quite a bit of time at the general store. Garrison Keillor lived in Marine for a while, and as he was developing his lovable Lake Wobegon characters, he gleaned inspiration from the town of Marine. In fact, when Keillor referenced Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery bearing the tagline, “If you can’t find it at Ralph’s, you can probably get along without it,” he was giving a direct nod to the real Ralph’s General Store.